Within an application, hyperlinks allow a user to navigate from one business view to another. A target business view may or may not belong to a source business context. A context comprises a visual display of data according to the user's current needs. A hyperlink, comprising a predefined linkage between objects in the application, may be displayed as text, an icon, or some other user-selectable elements. With Internet web pages, for example, a text hyperlink may appear as underlined text, while a graphical hyperlink may appear as a small image. A context and the data source used to produce it are often modeled during the application's design and may not be changed at run time.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are screen shots of conventional displays with conventional menu systems. An activity business view 100 displays details of an activity for a business partner 105 “Becker Berlin.” Upon execution (left mouse click, for example), a details hyperlink 110 navigates the application to a pre-defined view with business context 200 (FIG. 2), displaying a pre-defined view within business context 200. In addition, executing details hyperlink 110 also obtains data from the application and supplies the data to business partners context 200 for display.
With such conventional systems, a user may have to follow a long route to reach a desired business context view within a target business context following a hyperlink execution. For example, if a user viewing the activity business context 100 of FIG. 1 wanted to view the “sales area data” business view of “business partner” business context, the user must first navigate to business partners context 200, where the user can access sales area data hyperlink 205 in navigation menu 210. Then, the user may execute hyperlink 205 and display the desired “sales area data” business view. In the conventional menu systems of FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the user is not exposed to other possible semantically peer business views in the target business contexts, such as those shown in navigation menu 210, unless the user first navigates to an intermediate context, such as business partners context 200. This intermediate view, however, may be unimportant to the user.